


Landing

by wisekrakens



Series: Landing Universe [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fallen Castiel, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 12:58:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisekrakens/pseuds/wisekrakens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day Cas rips his grace out is not a happy day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Landing

The day Cas rips his grace out is not a happy day.

It wouldn’t have been, anyways – angel civil wars are notoriously unpleasant, and the morning of the great boss battle had had the gall to be foggy and a Monday and in the ass-end of nowhere on top of everything – but the sheer pain of falling enshrines it in Cas’s mind as The Worst Day Ever. 

When Sam asks, out of Sam’s misguided sense of sympathy, Cas describes ripping out his grace as a thousand blunt knives chipping away at the flesh between his lungs and freedom, and it’s true, in a sense. But it fails to capture the pain of doing this thing to yourself – the deep, spiritual, emotional pain of knowing that you could stop this, you could stop ripping your lungs out by the roots whenever you so desired, only you can’t. Not really. Not when your brothers and sisters don’t trust you. Not when your side won, and in winning lost the very qualities that made you claim it as your own. Not when you know, deep in the soul you don’t have, that there’s no place for you in the only home you’ve ever known. 

Lucky for Cas, there’s a pair of brothers willing to make a spot for him in theirs. 

So Cas rips his grace out, and he falls, and he stands, shivering for the first time, by the side of a Minnesota road waiting for Sam to drive two states because Dean’s getting an arm and a leg and two ribs set and taped by a doctor who doesn’t deserve the title. On the way back, Cas learns what happens to the human butt when its owner sits on it for too long, and that yes, that tightening in his belly is probably his bladder, and that no, Sam’s not going to answer questions from the other side of the bathroom door because it’s a Starbucks and people don’t do that in Starbucks. But when they get to Dean, Cas learns that it’s normal for humans to feel helpless when they see someone they care about half-drowned in medical plaster, and that it’s normal, for Winchesters at least, for that helplessness to transmute itself into rage. 

Cas liked that lesson, even thought it left him with a broken finger and a pair of bloody hands. Destroying that wall hadn’t been quite as satisfying as smiting the demon who hurt Dean would have been, but it still felt pretty good. 

In the bunker, Cas learns that Dean is absolutely hilarious on painkillers, and the first time his lips tighten in a smile at Dean’s overblown response to a telenovela Cas learns what Sam’s indulgent face looks like. 

When Dean starts insisting he doesn’t need the vicodin, Cas starts learning how to cook. Dean’s hamburgers are still better, but Cas somehow transcends kitchen basics and finds himself, somewhat bewildered, in the realm of French cuisine. Dean doesn’t say a word about his sudden obsolescence and continues to wheel himself over to the counter every time Cas fires up the Men of Letters’ grand old gas stove. 

Or his, now. His and Cas’s, since Sam only touches it to boil water for his nasty tea. 

The day Cas learns he has a soul comes two and a half months after the day he falls. He’s stirring a pot on the stove when it hits him like a lightning strike – either the soul or knowledge of it, he’s not entirely sure, and it’s hard to care when he feels the full spectrum of emotions for the first time. 

“I’m fine,” he tells Dean, who had started forward when Cas stumbled, wheelchair be damned. Of course he had. “I seem to have a soul now,” Cas finishes mildly. 

Dean doesn’t know how to take this, so he says _okay, cool_ , and munches on store-bought chocolate chip cookies because no one’s been able to bake them without burning yet. But Sam, when Cas finds him an hour later in the library to tell him the news and call him to dinner, nods and squeezes Cas’s shoulder. Sam knows what it’s like to suddenly have a soul, even if he hadn’t been aware of the transition at the time. He knows how it grounds you, how it pulls you more firmly into life. 

Cas grins back. It’s his first.


End file.
